The British film critic Leslie Halliwell (1929-1989) was one of the most devoted to his craft, and was notorious as one of the harshest, particularly of films from the 70's and 80's. Being Canadian and surrounded by film review guides that are quite American-centered and Hollywood-centric, I was refreshed, years ago, to find a guide that reviewed more films of British, European and World cinema that guides I had previously been able to find had, at the very best, only scratched the surface of. Now, in looking at the Wikipedia page about his life, I see that all of his Top Ten movies (topped by 'Citizen Kane') were from 1931-1946, probably MY favourite period of cinema as well. But be…
The British film critic Leslie Halliwell (1929-1989) was one of the most devoted to his craft, and was notorious as one of the harshest, particularly of films from the 70's and 80's. Being Canadian and surrounded by film review guides that are quite American-centered and Hollywood-centric, I was refreshed, years ago, to find a guide that reviewed more films of British, European and World cinema that guides I had previously been able to find had, at the very best, only scratched the surface of. Now, in looking at the Wikipedia page about his life, I see that all of his Top Ten movies (topped by 'Citizen Kane') were from 1931-1946, probably MY favourite period of cinema as well. But be warned: Whereas most film reviewers mostly give two, or 2 1/2, out of four (like more famous, American, critics such as Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert), Halliwell (and those who took up the torch after his death, up until this, the last guide I've been able to find of the company's) mostly gave zero--so prepare to be surprised if you see some of your favourites (like Michael Mann's 'Thief', for example!) don't pass his grade!
The last true film guide per se by Halliwell's was their 2008, the one with Spider-Man on the cover, which had over 24,000 movies reviewed in it! Because of customer complaints of the weight the book had amassed over the years, and the legibility of the ultra-fine print which necessarily had to be utilized, in an attempt to keep the book going (though it was unsuccessful, as it became the last Halliwell book to be published, as far as I know), David Gritten decided to have the book achieve three aims, in the resultant Halliwell's 'The Movies That Matter: From Bogart to Bond and All the Latest Film Releases' (2008; Vito Corleone from 'The Godfather' is the cover boy for this tome): 1) Pick 506 films from the dawn of cinema up to and including 1986; in his words, from 'Intolerance' to 'Blue Velvet' (hence my 5 'Important, Classic and--' lists in this series); 2) Pick 1,851 films, popular for renting, from 1987-2006 (hence my 5 'Important, Recent and--' lists in this series); and 3) 345 new film reviews since the publication of the aforementioned 2008 Guide (to save 5 small lists of not much usage from being made, I simply took the liberty of adding them to the massive lists resultant from the 2008 Guide; and thus, these 5 lists in the series).
From Halliwell's 2008 Film Guide, Gritten states: 'Three stars indicate a very high standard of professional excellence or great historical interest--or, if you like, three strong reasons for admiring it.'
As I have concluded putting the entries from 'The Movies That Matter' on the lists, I've worked out the percentages--Here goes!:
Awful: 41.45% (143 of the 345)
Fair: 26.96% (93 of the 345)
Good: 22.03% (76 of the 345)
Great: 7.54% (26 of the 345)
Masterpiece: 2.03% (7 of the 345)
As I've completed the entries from the book, the percentages are as follows (for the 21168 entries of the 2008 Film Guide):
Awful: 11882 (or 56.13%)
Fair: 5904 (or 27.89%)
Good: 2212 (or 10.45%)
Great: 869 (or 4.11%)
Masterpiece: 301 (or 1.42%)
Three-star reviews NOT in Letterboxd:
World of Plenty (Paul Rotha, 1943)
For the other 14 links in the series, here goes:
Classic Zero-Star: boxd.it/SIYo
Classic One-Star: boxd.it/SIYy
Classic Two-Star: boxd.it/SIYS
Classic Three-Star: boxd.it/SIZ2
Classic Four-Star: boxd.it/SIZc
Recent Zero-Star: boxd.it/SJ8I
Recent One-Star: boxd.it/SJ8S
Recent Two-Star: boxd.it/SJ92
Recent Three-Star: boxd.it/SJ9w
Recent Four-Star: boxd.it/SJ9G
Both Guides' Total Zero-Star: boxd.it/SJjm
Both Guides' Total One-Star: boxd.it/SJjw
Both Guides' Total Two-Star: boxd.it/SJjG
Both Guides' Total Four-Star: boxd.it/SJk0
Gritten says that in most cases, especially for classics, he felt Halliwell's exact review was more than sufficient and kept it intact, but occasionally he strongly disagreed and if there are notes, just press 'Read Notes' and I will my best to have any additional review and discrepancy posted and noted; I'm considering putting the entire reviews up but I'm not sure yet, one way or the other. My main goal is to simply get the star-ratings up and the lists complete.
Feel free to drop me a line with any comments, or just to say hello, and I hope you enjoy these lists and find them helpful!~~William Wood (Windsor, Ontario, Canada) =)